Experience the woods and the water in a whole new way
Settle in to one of Sugarloaf Cove’s scenic overlooks or a spot you choose on the beach, the peninsula, or the rocky cove where you can take in the long view of the great lake. The Beholder combines music and poetic reflection to help you slow down and be sourced by the expansive water’s offerings.
Download the audio onto your phone by pressing and holding down 1. The Beholder (under the Play bar) and choosing “Download Linked File” to be sure that your audio can play uninterrupted while you are on the trails/shore.
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Combining reflection on Sugarloaf Cove’s history, contemplative reflection, and original music, the listener is invited to spend time imagining what used to be here while cultivating hope for what is still to come when we partner with nature to evolve into an era of repair. This site-specific piece unfolds along the East Loop Nature Trail.
Download the audio onto your phone by pressing and holding down 1. The Successors (under the play bar) and choosing “Download Linked File” to be sure that your audio can play uninterrupted while you are on the trails/shore.
The Seeker is an immersive story about a person overwhelmed by the great grief of our times and their own personal grief over their father’s death. Through listening to the music held in the restoring woods of Sugarloaf Cove and the expansive water of Gitchi Gumi they remember their soul’s origin and live out hundreds of new futures. This site-specific piece unfolds along the West Loop Nature Trail.
Download the audio onto your phone by pressing and holding down 1. The Seeker (under the play bar) and choosing “Download Linked File” to be sure that your audio can play uninterrupted while you are on the trails/shore.
Story Walks featured in MinnPost
See an overview of The Seeker as featured on The Lift.
How it works:
These site-specific, self-led audio story walks unfold on our nature trails and on the shore of Sugarloaf Cove. The Seeker unfolds along the West Loop and The Successors unfolds along the East Loop. Listeners are encouraged to walk slowly on either one of our easy, half-mile hiking trails. For The Beholder, listeners can choose a spot (recommended places are the red triangles on the map below) on the water to have their experience.
How it works:
Getting support
When our Visitor Center is open, you can check out headphones and a listening device for free. Just find a staff or volunteer who will give you directions to help you get the equipment you need, answer your questions, and send you on your way.
Doing it by yourself
You can experience these projects anytime, even when the Visitor Center is closed. You will need your own headphones and listening device, like your phone. We recommend downloading the story so you can listen uninterrupted when you leave the reach of the guest wifi at the Visitor Center. Use the directions at the top of this page near each story walk’s description for downloading the audio if you want to use your own phone.
Artist Statement
and friends this is the realest place I know,
It might make you want to stay alive even, thank you;
I can’t stop
my gratitude, which includes, dear reader,
you, for staying here with me
-Ross Gay
Sugarloaf Cove has been an important place for me. I came here throughout my past to grieve the loss of a parent and to celebrate the birth of my child. I come here now in love and in heartbreak. I come here to find my way back to fullness when injustice and stressors leave me feeling depleted. I come here to be renewed by the unconditional presence this place offers. One of the reasons I feel like I can be myself here, even when I feel like a mess, is because this place feels very real to me. What is happening in these young woods is a very slow, imperfect process of coming back alive after a great loss. As a therapist, artist, parent, and friend, my greatest wish for all of us is that we do what this place is doing; grow from our hardships. In order to write these story walks, I opened up to listen and receive from what this place has learned after what it has been through. The rocks have held here for billions of years, the water for tens of thousands of years; longstanding witnesses to many transformations. These projects were written after decades of visits and hundreds of loops on the nature trails and hours sitting on the shore. The process of creating these pieces in collaboration with this place and these remarkable artists has been a gift that has transformed me. I hope the words and music in them feel like gifts to you too, dear listener. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Diver Van Avery
Thank you to the following friends, family, and artists who gave their voices in the following ways:
Singers for The Seeker: Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Brinkman, Tupelo Frances McGuire Cook-Shuler, Mike Hoyt, Masanari Kawahara, A.P. Looze, Marianne Norris, Miré Regulus, Nina Roberson, Byrd Shuler, Silversmith, Harper Anne Van Avery, Pramila Vasudevan, Erin Walsh, Gradylee Shapiro-Zimmer, Emily Zimmer
Parent/child singers for The Successors: Byrd Shuler and Tupelo Frances McGuire Cook-Shuler, Malia Araki Burkhart and Kayhan Kiyoji
Singers for The Successors: Lisa Berg, Deb Birkeland, Katie Fritz, Vicki Frutel, Brenda Larson, Dominique Menard, and Patti Paulson. Conducted and Assembled by Marcia Oates. Also included are participants from “Songs for the Trees” Workshop held at Sugarloaf Cove summer of 2025 led by Peter Morrow
Thank you to Sugarloaf Cove Nature Center’s Head Naturalist Dominique Menard and Executive Director Molly Thompson for discussing forest management on The Successors
Artist Bios:
Christian Bardin (Musician, Composer, and Singer on The Successors) is an interdisciplinary artist transplant originally from Houston, Texas. As a musician: debut album Shorts under the moniker CB. released 2023, Aura Vortex Records. Sometime backup singer for Aby Wolf, Eric Mayson, Theo Langason, Daniel Bonespur, Peter Morrow. As a theater maker: Red Eye Theater’s Works-in-Progress cohort 2022, Minnesota Opera MNiatures commission 2021: composer and director of the short opera YR GOD MY GOD (YouTube), composer/music director/foley for Ten Thousand Things/Metro State’s 2026 production of VASA LISA. Published poet via Queer Voices, professional actor since 2009 with Minnesota Opera, Jungle Theater, Guthrie Theater, Sandbox Theatre, others. Grad of the former U of M/Guthrie Theater BFA program under Ken Washington. ig: @c_bard
Chris Hepola (Drummer on The Seeker) Chris Hepola is a drummer, piano player and composer based in Minneapolis. He has written original compositions and arranged music for a wide variety of ensembles including The Poor Nobodys, House on Fire Band, Marsgarb and The Real Chuck Norad. In addition he has written music for many films and documentaries.
Theo Langason (Musician, Composer, and Singer on The Successors) is a multidisciplinary theatre artist, teaching artist, and musician based in Minneapolis. A graduate of Rutgers University–Camden with a degree in Theatre Arts, Theo has been working nationally and internationally as an actor, director, musician, composer, improviser, poet, and teaching artist for almost two decades.
A.P. Looze (Bass Compositions on The Seeker) is a transgender Minneapolis-based multi-disciplinary artist. Their work has spanned performance, music, installation, and a variety of visual artistic mediums. At the center of their work is a commitment to love. They are a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Combined Artistic Fields.
Peter Morrow (Sound and Technical Designer, Composer, Musician and Core Collaborator for The Seeker, The Beholder, and The Successors) is a Composer, Sound & Video Designer and teaching artist from Dublin, Ireland. Since moving to the Twin Cities in 2012 his collaborations with individual artists, theatres, dance companies and universities have included work with Pillsbury House, Red Eye Theatre, Ten Thousand Things, Ifrah Mansour, Leslie Parker, zAmya, Threads Dance Company, The Playwright Centre, Wonderlust, Theatre Latte Da, Macalester College, Augsburg University, University of. Minnesota and the Guthrie Theatre.
Crystal Myslajek (Musician, Composer, and Singer on The Seeker and The Beholder) is a Minneapolis-based multi-instrumentalist and composer who collaborates with artists across the Twin Cities on experimental film, performance art, theater, and dance projects. She has crafted an oceanic, emotive style of reverb-laden vocal and textural piano dreamscapes, drawing inspiration from minimalism, improvisation, pop, post-classical, jazz, ambient, and field recordings. Recent and current project highlights include her duo Chama Devora with Liz Draper, compositions for The Seeker by Diver Van Avery, and performing original music and sound design for SuperGroup’s FINE. Among her numerous projects, Crystal sang and played bass guitar in the bands Brute Heart and IE, has released original music on several indie labels including Moon Glyph, Water Wing Records, Æther Sound, and Soft Abuse, and has produced original works commissioned by the Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, and The Cedar Cultural Center.
Juliet Patterson (Artist Mentor on The Successors) is the author of Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide (Milkweed Editions, September 2022), finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Awards and named one of the best memoirs of 2022 by Library Journal. She has also published two full-length poetry collections, Threnody, (Nightboat Books 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Poetry Award, and The Truant Lover, (Nightboat Books, 2006), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. A recipient of the Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in non-fiction, and a Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she has also been awarded fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minneapolis-based Creative Community Leadership Institute (formerly the Institute for Community and Creative Development). She teaches creative writing and literature at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis.
Witt Siasoco (Graphic Design for The Seeker) is a visual artist using public space to catalyze civic dialogue and collective action. For 25 years, he has worked at the intersection of the arts and civic life as a community-based artist, organizer, and educator. His work arises from a belief that art lives everywhere — in neighborhoods, on streets, where people live and work — and is most impactful when created in collaboration with local people and placed and performed in public. His creative process channels person-to-person conversations around community issues into hybrid work that blends painting and drawing, design, sculpture and/or site-specific installation.
Margot Bassett Silver (Musician, Composer, and Singer on The Beholder) is a vocalist and songwriter based in Minneapolis. She has toured internationally with Emily Johnson/Catalyst in addition to performing Off-Broadway and in Meredith Monk’s Songs of Ascension at BAM. Margot spent most of her life making interdisciplinary performance (that always involved singing) and followed the beautiful and unpredictable stream of creativity more solely towards music during the pandemic. She released her first album as Silversmith, soft skills, in July 2022 and a 2nd EP, Beautiful, in November 2024. Her voice can be heard on the theme song of the podcast Feminist Files, which traces the origins of Title IX. She is also a parent, a tarot enthusiast, a student of grief, and a lover of beauty in all forms.
stowe silver (Graphic Design and Visual Artist for The Beholder and The Successor) is a queer artist, graphic designer, and parent currently living on unceded Dakota homelands, Mni Sota Makoce, Minneapolis, Minnesota. stowe’s experiences range from fine art studios, galleries, and printshops, to small business ownership, freelancer and in-house design teams. They have a BFA, concentrating in printmaking and drawing, from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Graphic and Web Design at Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Moheb Soliman (Artist Mentor for The Seeker) is an interdisciplinary poet from Egypt and the Midwest. His debut poetry collection HOMES explores nature, modernity, identity, belonging, and sublimity through the site of the Great Lakes bioregion/borderland. Moheb‘s work has been recognized and supported by diverse institutions, residencies, and awards, among which particularly impactful favorites are the Joyce Foundation, Banff Centre, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, The Momentary, Red Eye and Pillsbury House, Minnesota Book Awards and MSAB. He is the executive editor and literary program director at Mizna.
Diver Van Avery is a fiscal year 2023 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant and the 2025 Arts Experiences from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Additional programming activity is made possible in part by a grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council with funds appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature from its General Fund.
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